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Steven Bowman // Masada and Noble Death in the Greek Shoah

Masada and Noble Death in the Greek Shoah

**NEW DATE**

When Greek Jews faced the Nazi onslaught, their responses were influenced by an ideal of noble death based on the story of Jewish resistance at Masada. The tale had come down to them over two millennia, reverberating with striking variations from the ancient account of Josephus through the crusades and finally to their unique culture, a historic world center of Sephardi Jewry.

Steven Bowman is Professor Emeritus of Judaic Studies in the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, and past winner of prestigious Fulbright-Hays and Lady Davis research awards. He is a noted world expert in the history of Greek Jewry, especially during the period of the Holocaust, and is the author of The Agony of Greek Jewry, 1940–1945 (Stanford University Press, 2009). Research interests also include Byzantine Jewish history and the medieval book Sefer Yosippon. He is an adjunct fellow at the Katz Center this spring.